Building control and automation systems (BCAS) are growing increasingly common in modern building construction. These systems traditionally automated heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems along with other mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. Many modern buildings, from large-scale office buildings to homes, now incorporate aspects of BCAS into their building control scheme; although in individual residential applications, they may be referred to in other ways, such as home automation systems.
The traditional BCAS is a system which operates out of a central server in the basement or other utility space of the building. This server is in turn serviced by a series of controllers and buses, which manage the data running between the server and the systems throughout the building that are being controlled in an automated fashion. The server in such a configuration is also connected to user terminals and sensors, which regulate the behavior of the overall system by providing input. Initially, such terminals were at the same premises or at most located at a premises of a management or monitoring enterprise; although increasingly, the user terminal may be any device anywhere that has data network access and appropriate programming for user interaction with the BCAS automation server.
As the technology has improved, BCAS systems have come to incorporate additional elements to further control and automate the functionality of buildings. These systems have come to additionally include security systems, building access systems, fire or safety alarm systems, commercial systems, and many other aspects of building control. The devices that populate such systems have traditionally been dumb and while they have been connected to user input devices, sensors or perhaps a central server, they generally lacked further capability to communicate and automate.
Additionally, as technology has improved, the building control elements that can be incorporated into a BCAS have become more intelligent. Of particular note is the improvement of lighting devices. Traditional lighting devices have tended to be relatively dumb, in that they can be turned ON and OFF, and in some cases may be dimmed, usually in response to user activation of a relatively simple input device. Lighting devices have also been controlled in response to ambient light detectors that turn on a light only when ambient light is at or below a threshold (e.g. as the sun goes down) and in response to occupancy sensors (e.g. to turn on light when a room is occupied and to turn the light off when the room is no longer occupied for some period). Often traditional lighting devices are controlled individually or as relatively small groups at separate locations. Traditional BCAS elements have tended to be similarly dumb and narrow in the sources of inputs they may accept, configurations they may adapt to, and the scope of control users and sensors may have over them.
With the advent of modern electronics has come advancement, including advances in networking and control capabilities of lighting devices and other utility building control and automation system elements. As increased processing capacity finds its way into building control and automation system elements, it becomes relatively easy to incorporate associated communications capabilities, e.g. to allow building control and automation system elements to communicate with other system control elements and/or with each other. In this way, advanced electronics in building control and automation system elements as well as the associated control elements have facilitated more sophisticated building control algorithms as well as increased networking of building control and automation system elements.
Sensing and network communications have included lighting functions/applications of the lighting devices. For example, sensors may be provided in a lighting device to detect parameters relevant to control operation of the lighting device, and the processor in the device controls the source(s) of the device in response to the sensor inputs. Alternatively or in addition, a communication interface in each of a number of networked lighting devices may allow communication about the status of each lighting device to a system control center. A programmed computer or a person at the control center then may be able to send commands to individual lighting devices or to groups of lighting devices, for example, based on a decision responsive to one or more conditions sensed by some or all of the lighting devices. In a similar fashion, sensing and interface devices have been provided for HVAC and other elements or systems that may be incorporated into or controlled as part of a BCAS system.
In lighting, these advances in devices and networked systems have mainly addressed aspects of the lighting provided by the lighting devices. For example, lighting devices may be adjusted, turned ON and/or turned OFF in response to user input or based on monitored conditions, either by processor logic within the device(s) or commands from a local controller (e.g. configured as a control panel on a wall) or from a central control. From the perspective of a BCAS type of arrangement, the networking may facilitate BCAS server communication with the lighting system components. The BCAS server, however, has implemented the higher level logic related to overall building control for lighting and other building systems.
The increasingly sophisticated electronics associated with lighting and other utility building control and automation elements often now include a central processing device as well as memory for program and data storage within each of many individual devices that are in or controlled by the system. Where the lighting devices and utility building control and automation elements are networked, each device also includes some form of communication interface, to enable the desired communication with other lighting devices, utility building control and automation elements, in-room lighting controllers and/or with networked control computers.
The processing, memory and communication elements of the system elements involve costs, when purchasing and deploying lighting devices or the like. Building an installed base of such equipment, with substantial numbers of individual devices each having sophisticated electronics, incurs a financial investment. Considering lighting devices by way of example, in many cases, the electronics are a substantial cost for each lighting device, and that cost may be multiplied by a large number of such devices in an extensive networked implementation owned by or operated for a large enterprise. Similar processing and memory resources may be included in other utility building control and automation system elements, such as controllers in the various areas of the premises within which the system is installed. Despite the infrastructure cost, the memory and processing resources may be idle for substantial periods of time, e.g. in the context of lighting, when lighting devices are OFF for extended periods or even during operations when individual lighting devices and/or lighting controllers are not actively communicating or not using full processing or memory resources (for example during intervals between substantial device setting changes, which may require execution of a processing intensive algorithm). In addition to the infrastructure costs for such resources in the lighting devices and/or controllers, such a system may include additional computer resources for implementation of the building control and automation system server.
Hence, there is room for improvement in the usage of the resources in various elements of a networked intelligent building control and automation system, e.g. to increase the usage of costly processing and memory resources in networked elements and/or to reduce or eliminate the need for additional computer hardware to host a centralized control functionality.